The MEN1 Mosaic

#55 - Inherited Disease or Inherited Trauma? Genes Won't Explain THIS (Trauma Expert & Medical Doctor)

• Lizzie Dunn • Season 2 • Episode 5

Share episode

Could your disease be trauma, passed down through generations? - Season 2, Episode 5

Today, Dr Aimie Apigian completely reshapes how I understand MEN1 and genetic disease in general. We explore the science of inherited trauma, the role of the nervous system in healing, and why traditional approaches to physical illness often fall short.

Listen to find out:
• Why your genetic diagnosis might be missing the real root cause
• The single system controlling all your symptoms (and how to regulate it)
• How stored trauma can literally trigger disease in the body
• What healing looks like (when the body leads, not the mind)
• Why praise for 'resilience' could be dangerous for your health

If you've ever wondered why your body lets you down, even when your mind is doing everything right,  this one is for you.

About Our Guest: A Preventive and Addiction Medicine physician with Master’s degrees in both biochemistry and public health, Dr. Aimie Apigian is the national bestselling author of The Biology of Trauma. She hosts her podcast, leads online nervous system healing courses and a practitioner certificate training program. Bridging the worlds of functional medicine, attachment and trauma, she is a leading expert on how the body holds fear and overwhelm from the past to make one sick today.

Find Dr Aimie's #1 Besterseller on Amazon: Click here

Connect with Dr Aimie here:
Instagram: Click here
LinkedIn: Click here
YouTube: Click here
Website: Click here
Podcast: Click here

Are you sure MEN1 can’t be influenced?
When I stopped just 'settling' for symptom management, I began carving a path to somewhere I believed impossible in MEN1: symptom-free, surgery-free, and medication-free. If you’re curious to see how I’m making this happen, join my community here.

Disclaimer
I share my personal experience as a MEN1 patient. Nothing in this episode, including the opinions of my guests, is intended as medical or holistic advice. Please consult a qualified professional before making changes to your care.

With a genetic diagnosis, which we're told MEN1 is, it feels as though it's very much a set thing. It's an endocrine disease. It's caused by a mutation. It affects these specific glands in the body. Why on earth is the nervous system having anything to do with the endocrine system?  

 When we have any variation in our biology, whether that variation is a genetic component or whether that variation is an acquired component, it's still the same for the nervous system. It sees it as a vulnerability. When a challenge, a problem or a danger presents itself, our nervous system is going to say, I'm not sure we have the capacity for this, I am going to move into overwhelm faster than if I didn't have these vulnerabilities. It's that trauma biology that creates dysregulation and dysregulation of the nervous system causes dysregulation of the hormone system, causes dysregulation of our cardiovascular system, causes dysregulation of our digestive system. The nervous system is what drives all the other systems, because it's what allows them to adapt to our environment. The nervous system, when it becomes dysregulated in its responses, it's going to cause dysregulation of all the other systems.

Today's guest taught me that MEN1 symptoms are a signpost to unprocessed emotion in the body, and not just my own, but that of generations of relatives before me. Dr. Aimie Apigian is a medical doctor and renowned trauma expert whose work helps people like me heal their body via their nervous system. In this episode, Dr. Aimie explains why inherited disease probably means inherited trauma, how traditional psychotherapy fails so many disease patients and why her three pillar approach has helped her clients put disease symptoms into remission for good. Let's dive back in. 

Dr. Aimie, it is super exciting to have you on and I've been wanting to jump straight in actually and tell you so much about what it is in your work that drew me to looking at trauma and how trauma may well be presenting in myself, my experience, my disease, which is MEN1. I found you via an Oxford event last year, and I heard you speak about your area of expertise, trauma, nervous system, the biology of healing. I came to that event not really knowing how trauma could affect a physical disease like MEN1 and I've had a complete shift. How could trauma not affect physical disease? It's not something that gets spoken about massively at all. Particularly not on a kind of traditional patient practitioner level when it comes to conventional medicine. It's definitely something I've had to dive into. From your experience working with patients and also the work you've done more latterly on your trauma courses and the book I know that you have written and published, what is it that you've learned about the way that trauma, dysregulation of the nervous system, manifests as physical symptoms of disease inside the body? 

For me as a physician, this was even shocking when I learned the depth to which it goes. Lizzie. And I had learned it on a superficial level. I had learned it on a research level. I had learned it from the studies that had been done, but to really see the impact and the influence that the nervous system has on everything, like you say, it will affect everything.

And so I see the nervous system as being the primary location where trauma gets stored from our past experiences that weren't resolved. And our nervous system is in charge of our survival. It's in charge of our everyday moments. It's in charge of guiding our physiology, our inner physiology, our inner biology, to match the current situation that we're in. And I'll just give you a brief example of that. If you walk outside and whether it's hot or whether it's cold, guess who's responsible for changing your physiology in order to meet that temperature change. It's your nervous system, and so if it's hot outside, you're gonna start sweating. That's your nervous system having turned on your sweat glands.

As a result of noticing our environment has changed, we need to respond to that. The nervous system is all about responding. How do we respond to our environment, whether outer environment, inner environment, in a very dynamic way in order to help us survive. And thus, if the nervous system is what's really directing our inner physiology and our inner biology, it will affect everything. So even if we have a truly genetic disease, the nervous system is still going to be influencing the degree of symptoms that we have from that. 

This is gonna be profound for so many people listening back because with a genetic diagnosis, which we're told MEN1 is, it feels as though it's very much a set thing. It's an endocrine disease. It's caused by a mutation. It affects these specific glands in the body. Why on earth is the nervous system having anything to do with the endocrine system? 

In the way that I see the body, right? You, you, you take it all together because it can't actually separate it. And when the nervous system is deciding how to respond to a situation, whether that's an emotional situation, whether that's a physical situation like walking outside with the temperature change. As the nervous system is deciding what do I need to do to adapt in order to best survive in this moment? It's looking at, well, what are my vulnerabilities? What are my vulnerabilities and what are my capacities and when it sees vulnerabilities? That's where it's saying, oh, we may need to do a more aggressive adaptation or a less aggressive adaptation because I've gotta protect this vulnerability. If we have a large capacity and by a large capacity, it can be an emotional capacity, like maybe we feel. We have support. We've got a community. We have people who get us. We have people where we can be our true, authentic selves. That's a capacity builder maybe. We have a great diet, we have a great lifestyle, so our natural rhythms are aligned with our body from our melatonin to our cortisol, or maybe the environment in which we live is relatively toxin free. And so it's looking at all of these factors to know, how do I best help you survive right here, right now. And so when we have any, any variation in our biology, whether that variation is a genetic component or whether that variation is an acquired component, like a toxin burden or a nutrient deficiency. Either way, it's still the same for the nervous system. It sees it as a vulnerability, and that means that we are not as strong as our mind would like to make us out to be. And when a challenge, a problem or a danger presents itself, our nervous system is going to say, Hmm, I'm not sure we have the capacity for this, given our vulnerabilities, and given that I am going to move into overwhelm or that trauma biology faster than if I didn't have these vulnerabilities. And it's that trauma biology that really creates more and more dysregulation and dysregulation of the nervous system causes dysregulation of the hormone system, causes dysregulation of our cardiovascular system, causes dysregulation of our digestive system, the nervous system. Is what drives all the other systems, because it's what changes them allows them to adapt to our environment. And so the nervous system, when it becomes dysregulated in its responses, it's going to cause dysregulation of all the other symptoms and systems. 

Wow. So I was under the impression for many, many years with MEN1 that my body was working against me somehow. Like whatever I did, it didn't matter what diet I was following, how many cold showers I was having per day, like my body was. Almost wired to be awkward and to be difficult, but from what you've just told me, it sounds as though that's actually mistaken thinking and that my body, if anything, is trying to heal, is trying to get better. So with this mistaken belief I have. I always had this doubt in my head that it is really possible to heal, but what I'm getting from you is like actually, when the body has the right environment and when I know how to meet my needs, it's very possible that I could help my body into a state where. It is healthy again, regardless of the genetic mutation. Or put it this way, whatever the genetic mutation is doing, the body has the support it needs in order to heal. Is that correct? 

 Isn't that amazing? Our bodies are actually quite incredible, and the way that they are designed is with so much ability to do well, to function well, even with some genetic vulnerabilities. And so looking at the power of that nervous system and realizing that the most beneficial thing that I could do for myself and my body is to help my nervous system be in its best and healthiest state, and then that no matter what genetic condition I have will allow me to be in the best health with that genetic condition. 

And what is the best and healthiest state for a nervous system? How would I experience it in myself and what might I see it like in other people? 

What a great question. It's like, where, where's the goal here? Where is our true north? Where are we even heading? Because a lot of people honestly haven't experienced that. They don't, they don't know what, what that means. They don't know what that feels like. And honestly, Lizzie, I mean, you've been through the courses, you can see how most people have never even truly felt safe in their body. And many of them have thoughts that their body is somehow working against them or is betraying them, and it does feel like that, and it does seem like that until you understand that it's actually. Slowing us down because it's protecting us from doing too much that would burn us out or kill us. And, and so as we look at how does what, what a nervous system, a healthy nervous system look like, again, we're looking at the responses.

The nervous system is all about being able to respond. An unhealthy nervous system is going to respond in ways that are either. Overreacting or underreacting and doesn't matter what it is, whether it's our blood sugar levels after we eat a meal and our sugar levels spike really high, that's overreacting. Or we are in a relationship and you know, something happens and, and we just are like, ugh. Like I just don't have the energy. To talk about it, to address it, to look at it. I'm going to just avoid it. There's the underreacting. We can also see that with startle responses. Some people hyper startle, others don't do anything at all, and so that is evidence of the nervous system.

So now we apply that to, well then what would a healthy nervous system look like? And one of the analogies that has helped me over the years is to look at it as if it's riding the waves of life. Riding the waves of life. And I will tell you that previously I felt that my nervous system was just getting drowned by the waves of. It wasn't riding a wave of life. A wave would come and I would get drowned, and in fact, I would probably get slammed into the bottom of the ocean and then drug up on the shore and just feel beat up by life rather than feeling like anything like I was actually riding the wave. So let's talk about riding the wave.

What, what would that look like? What would that feel like? Well, we've got imagery. Thankfully we can turn on our TV and watch people who ride waves. So we know what it looks like and it looks beautiful. But one of the important aspects of that, Lizzie, is this dynamic response. They're very alert, but they're not scared. They're very engaged. They're not afraid. They're very alive. And so when you look at how they are even positioned on their surfboard, you see that they are in this state of readiness. And that's what a healthy nervous system looks like. It's not that it's waiting for the next shoe to drop, and you're living in fear and hyper vigilance. That's not readiness, but you're on your board, you're enjoying the view, you're watching the dolphins, you're feeling the water. You're loving being in nature and, and alive. And then the wave comes and it doesn't toss you off your board because you're ready and you actually get up on your board and, and that's what it would look like.

If a challenge or a problem came our way, we would, we would rise to the occasion. We would be able to rise to the occasion and ride that problem all the way through, overcome that problem rather than have the problem feel like it's drowning us and beating us up. 

I relate to so much of what you have just said, and I wanted to dive in a little bit on coping. My way of coping was to not feel, and my way to not feel was to not breathe. And when I came and I did your course and we did so many amazing somatic exercises, I realized that I had such a disconnection from my body and I would shut myself off from feeling. And it came to me that I was living most of my life, probably the vast majority of my life up here in my head with very little connection. It was only the work I've done with you and then some yoga and some meditation that's really put my back into my body. Why do we exist in our heads? What is it that sends us from the body up into the head, and why can't we get back down into the rest of our existence? 

I mean, you have just spoken truth. You have just spoken the human experience for so many people, Lizzie, and this was me as well. But the crazy thing is, is I didn't even realize that I was disconnected from my body. I didn't realize that I was not breathing very much because I didn't have anything to compare it to. It was just how I had always been. So when I realized how disconnected I was from my own body, it really did come as a surprise because I had thought that I was very connected with my body. So when we look at trauma and overwhelming experiences in our life, most of us are not resolving those experiences at that time, which means it gets stored in our nervous system. And when that gets stored, ... There are these survival mechanisms that continue to play out because our body is still sensing we're in that overwhelm, that danger might still be there. We haven't had that full reset to safety as a result. As a result, there is this pattern that I will call dissociation. Dissociation is a strong word. I don't use that lightly, but I really want to emphasize the degree to which we are able to disconnect from our body and function in a busy, stressful, overwhelming world. And dissociation then is just a degree of disconnection and people are separated by different degrees from their body. But when you have stored trauma, that is one of the patterns that will show up to some degree. This idea of disconnection from your body, why would that actually be a survival mechanism? How does that actually help us survive? Well, as we consider what is happening inside of us during a response to something overwhelming, it creates sensations that are awful. We feel shame, we feel powerless. We feel trapped. We feel so alone. Those are awful things to feel. Why would I want to feel those? And in fact, if I let myself feel that, I may not be able to function, I may not be able to actually do what I need to do to survive and get through this. And so we look at that dissociation as a way that our mind and our body has developed to actually help us survive what feels unsurvivable. And then as that trauma experience gets stored in our body, we start to develop more and more. Inner pain, inner sensations that aren't comfortable. And then it becomes this feedback loop because why would I want to be in my body? My body is in pain, emotional pain, physical pain. I don't like my body. My body is working against me. At least that's the thought that I have. Why would I wanna be in my body? And so then we reinforce our ability to live from our heads and we analyze everything. We learn everything. We study, everything. We sign up for more and more courses just to be able to learn and be in our heads. And then the attempt to understand ourselves, not realizing that understanding is not what's going to change ourselves. It is that experience of going into the body. And as you've seen how I lead people to do that process, it's a very gentle process that is needed. Because we've been disconnected for so long that if we don't do it in baby steps, we get overwhelmed and we're like, I am outta here. This is not working. This is making it worse. I feel worse. I am out of here. And so that process of connecting our head back to our body is actually more difficult than people might realize, which is why I see a lot of people still prefer to do things that are mind or brain-based, like maybe meditation or some of the cognitive behavioral therapies 'cause that's their comfort zone. That's where they feel safer. They feel safer talking about it, analyzing it, trying to understand it, or using meditation as a way to escape their body even more. Let me visualize and let me go outside of myself and outside of my body. And all of that can actually be under the guise of something healthy and good because we've been told that meditation is great, but actually it's just another way that our trauma pattern is showing up in our attempts to just not feel and be in our body. 

The reason I'm grinning is because everything of every single thing you just mentioned, there is an escape route that I have tried to take myself. You name it, I've done it. I've been there. I've tried everything, and it is so true in my experience that until the body becomes a part of the healing journey, it cannot happen from the mind. And I'm just gonna stay exactly where I am and it's gonna be so frustrating because I might be spending a fortune on practitioners, on different therapies, on supplements, on, you name it. And actually, when the body's not involved, nothing is really gonna make a difference. Nothing is sustainable and, and that is annoying, you know. 

It is annoying. It is inconvenient. It is frustrating. It is all of that, and that's where I was too. I think that that's where a lot of people go, right? Like I don't think that we're different from most people because we're all just trying to figure out how do we do life? And if this is what feels like I can do and feel safe, okay, well then let me go all in 'cause I do want a better life. And, and that's the paradox is that actually the better life is going through where you don't want to go. It is actually connecting with that body. Just the way in which we do it is so important too. 

100%. And you mentioned such an important word there, which is a paradox and it's something that I am actually in a bit of a process where over the past couple of weeks, this idea that we, or I'll speak for myself, I tend to gravitate naturally towards what I find easy. And it's like, oh, you know, this is, it's manageable, it's controllable, it's manageable, and I have oversight. And then when something that feels like I have to open up and be vulnerable, for so much of my life, that wasn't even an option, maybe with the closest, closest members of my family. But even then they used to say to me, oh, you know, you're so emotionally held together. And I took it as a compliment. It was an ego boost, honestly. People would say to me, you're so resilient and you're so strong. That's what we are taught as as strength, which is such, such, an irony, and we're never gonna heal like that, Or I wasn't healing like that anyway. And it wasn't until I found your work that I so understood I had to let those sensitivities open up and to receive help for someone to come in and, and see me for what I was going through. And I think that is not second nature. And I think that is why we're in a state where we are with health and healthcare right now because there's such a lack of that understanding of the body, which is central in your work. I know. Absolutely central. 

It frustrates me to no end to see resilience of that kind praised 'cause that's not resilience. That's pushing through, that's surviving. So let's call it that. Let's call it, Hey, you're surviving, you're pushing through. But that is, that resilience, that kind of resilience is going to come at a cost, and it's the same thing that I see them say about children, Lizzie. Children are so resilient. Look at how they handled whatever situation it was, and I'm like, oh, if you only knew what was happening inside, you would see that they've just stored and stuffed it. It will come back, it will come back later. It will present as a disease 10, 20, 30 years later. That's, that's what you're praising for their resilience and it's actually reinforcing their survival mechanisms of further numbing, avoiding, distracting. But holding on to those emotional wounds in order to try to hold it all together. 

It makes me reflect a lot upon what our grandparents and great-grandparents generations must have gone through. Because, okay. It's not easy for us, but we live in a world where you and I are allowed to have a podcast conversation and put it out to the world about this. We're allowed to be vulnerable, we're allowed to share in our experience. But as far as I'm aware, my grandparents certainly were not doing that, and they experienced some atrocities. It made me want to ask you, can trauma be passed down generations? Can we inherit trauma? 

We see this and we have the studies to prove it. And it's fascinating, Lizzie, to see that it's, it's in all the layers. So I talk about trauma impacting us on the layer of the mind, our thoughts, our actions, behaviors, beliefs about ourself, trauma impacting us on our body level, tissue level, muscle memory level. When people take the biology of stress module with me, for example, they're always shocked to learn about that learned helplessness and even the highest functioning practitioners in my training program and they're like, shoot, I've got this learned helplessness pattern wired in. I'm like, Uhhuh, because it becomes a muscle memory. But trauma also impacts us on the biology level. And when we look at generational trauma, we see it being passed down in all of the three levels as well. So when we look at the thoughts, the thought that you have to work hard, get a good education 'cause that's your best salvation, that is one of the most common thoughts and beliefs that are passed down in generations because of what our grandparents went through. Or maybe if there's been other generational trauma, the Holocaust, for example, there can still be those beliefs of I can't relax. I'm, I'm actually never safe. Even if I think that I'm safe, something might happen. I, I am a target. Those are all things that can be passed down in our thoughts and our beliefs, but then we look at the body level. And I've heard so many experiences of people who felt that they had a, that they were having an experience, a muscle memory, a a a tissue memory of something that they found out that one of their grandparents or even previous generations or parents had gone through. I remember one lady and she had a story of, she always felt like she was suffocating and then she learned a story of one of her grandmothers and she had had, it was some, like some kind of drowning experience and she was able to move through that. And detach that from her body, but that somatic implicit memory had actually been passed down so that she was the one who would have these episodes of feeling I'm, I can't breathe. I can't breathe, and wouldn't know why. And then there's the biology level. And studies have shown that the DNA gets changed. And part of what I go over in my book is this idea of how oxidative stress is one of the central features of how trauma impacts our biology and trauma becomes our epigenetic conditions. Epigenetic referring to the actual damage that it does to our DNA. It can affect us in our lifetime because epigenetic conditions are things like cancer. Even autoimmunity. PTSD has now been shown to be an epigenetic trigger where our body just crosses a line. I call that the line of overwhelm, the critical line of overwhelm. Our body crosses that line where it says, I could clean up and handle this amount of oxidative stress, but I can't do this amount. And once it gets to an excess amount, it starts damaging our DNA and triggering these conditions. But this is also how generational trauma gets passed down because they would've also had an excess of oxidative stress that would've also impacted their DNA, not at the genetic level, at the epigenetic level, determining how are different genes get expressed? I think of it like a library. You walk into a library and which books can I actually check out and read? The librarian tells me which books I can check out and read. I can't check them all out. There are some that she's like, Nope, can't, can't take those. So that's the same thing with epigenetics. It changes which genes are able to be read and how they are expressed? Well, those are the changes that get passed down to us. Epigenetics do get passed down to us, and it gets passed down, especially through the mother because of the mitochondrial DNA that gets passed on to children, so it's the mother's mitochondrial, DNA. It's not the father's mitochondrial, DNA, it's the mother's mitochondrial DNA that gets passed on. So especially on that mother's side is where we see generational trauma being passed down and the impact affecting the later generations at a physical level, their physical health symptoms and conditions. 

This is gonna be so mind boggling to so many people listening back, because most listeners to this podcast have some degree of awareness that a genetic mutation and the disease that comes with it is maybe not just, okay, you've got these symptoms and you have to live with it for the rest of your life. A lot of people are here because they wanna get better and they wanna learn how to get better, but when we ask these questions to our medical professionals, like, why is the gene mutation there? Where did it start? What am I potentially doing that I'm not aware of to be perpetuating it and passing it down? And the responses we are met with can vary, but the most common one is we don't know, or it's random, we don't have evidence for it. Nothing. There's no science to back up the hypotheses that are out there. In instances generational trauma where physical symptoms, whether or not it comes from a genetic disease specifically or anything else, but where symptoms have presented in someone you can almost trace the line back through a family, have those people been able to heal their trauma and therefore heal their disease? 

For me, the biology of trauma is a message of hope. Because I was stuck in my own biology of trauma, both from my generational trauma, from my own, and then living decades disconnected from my body, and so further perpetuating this stress and overwhelm loop. And the biology of trauma though, gives us repair tools. And it shows us and guides us into, and here's what you can do about it. Yes, we do have tools for oxidative stress. We do have tools for reducing that burden of oxidative stress. That is not going to be the only thing you need to do though, and you're gonna need to look at the mind level. You need to look at the body level. You're gonna need to look at the other biology factors, and I call this support, bringing in support. How can we support your body, your mind, your biology, so that your body can do the repair? And this is one of the most important principles that gives us hope, is that the body, when it has what it needs, it can heal. It can repair. One of the, you know, I think most clear examples of that is if when someone has a surgery, have you had a surgery, Lizzie? 

Yes, I have. Yes. 

Yes. Did your skin heal over the incision?

yes.

Yeah, mine did too. Wasn't that fascinating? Did you have to go to therapy and talk about it? Did you have to do the meditation visualizations for like bringing your skin together or did, did the body just heal itself from that infusion?

Yeah, it just healed itself and knew what it was doing. 

Isn't that cool? Mine too. I've had two surgeries and same thing. It, it healed over that incision. So this is, for me, I took that. Very clear example from when I was in general surgery residency and I'm seeing these bodies heal themselves and repair once the block had been removed. And that was my job as the surgeon is to remove the block.

Oh, you have an appendicitis. Well, clearly that's going to remain a problem. Let me take out the block and then your body can do the repair and the healing. So I'm just taking those same principles and now applying it over to trauma, the impact of trauma, knowing that the body has an innate capacity to heal, it has all of these strategies that are built in.

We don't have to teach it to heal an incision. It just does it. So it has all of these strategies already built in. I just need to remove the blocks. And so that's what we do. Even with the generational trauma, if it hasn't been healed, something's blocking that. What's blocking it? Let me remove that block and then the body can do its reorganization.

Its rewiring, and reset. Back to safety. 

How often is that block something physical like an appendicitis? And how often is it something unphysical? So intangible, perhaps emotional or mental? 

I'm gonna tell you what a great question. I'm gonna tell you that it depends on how long the trauma has been stored. And this is one of the key differences between responding to a stress in the moment and responding to a stress that became a trauma that became stored and now it's 20, 30, 40, 50 years later. If we can respond in the moment even to something that becomes a trauma, we can complete that cycle, that response, and it doesn't create those lasting impacts on our biology, on our body, on our mind. And so in the moment, the blocks are more going to be something emotional and something mental because the biology doesn't, hasn't had the time to catch up. But you take that and you don't resolve that, and you now compound that over time. Now you've also got biology, and so now the biology. Whether it be inflammation, whether it be nutrient deficiencies, a toxin burden, because stored trauma just attracts toxins and holds onto them, or maybe it's any other aspect of the biology of trauma that I talk about, those become the block. And since they're present all the time, then that becomes the constant background block. Now, our beliefs are also part of that, and I would say that when times are good, you may not recognize that you have self-limiting beliefs or beliefs about the world that are no longer helpful. But a problem is presented or a challenge, and you notice yourself back in those thoughts. The world is against me. No one likes me. I'm all alone. I have to do this all. I can't trust anyone. And you'll notice those thoughts come back and then that's when you know, ah, I've also got some mental blocks that I will need to work on. But that's for me, the beauty of being able to see how they all play together. Because if someone tries to come in and they just try to do the biology work, maybe they're just doing all of the gut stuff, the gut repair, the oxidative repair, but they're missing the somatic work, they're missing the movement, they're missing the mind and, and actually shifting those beliefs through the parts work, they're not going to get the degree of healing that they need. But at the same time, if someone's doing all of the parts work, they've gone so deep into internal family systems, maybe they've even gotten trained in somatic work because that's how deep they've gone in, but they've neglected the biology, that biology remains the block. So there are blocks at all three levels where trauma has impacted us, and that's where we need to go. And I love to be able to approach it in an integrative way so that if I'm working on someone, for example, if I'm working on their insecure attachment style, i'm not going to just do one piece at a time. I know that if I can come in and we're focused on attachment and I can work on the biology piece of attachment and the somatic piece of attachment, and the parts work with attachment, we're able to create shifts. That feel sometimes like moving mountains because we simply brought in all the three pieces at the same time. It's when you only are trying to address the attachment from one angle that you're like, why is this so hard? I feel like I'm beating my head against the wall. Well, you kinda are because there's these other blocks that you're not addressing at all, and so bringing them together, that integration of these three layers allows us to experience greater shifts than what we've thought possible, because what we've experienced is really just trying to come at it with one rather than all three. One of my favorite ways to express this is saying it doesn't take much. A little bit of the biology work is, say we're still talking about attachment, a little bit of the biology work, a little bit of the somatic work and a little bit of the parts work. You actually don't have to do that much of each to start seeing shifts, to start seeing shifts. We do need to bring in all three because when you have all three, they're like small hinges. And when you've got small hinges and you've got three of these small, small, you just did baby steps, small hinges move big doors in our life. 

I am so glad you've shared that because maybe someone who's sitting, listening to this episode might be thinking, well, not only have I got a whole lifetime of my own trauma to be dealing with, I have the genetic condition, which presupposes that there is centuries of ancestors worth of trauma as well. Is it gonna take me the rest of my life to shift this? But it sounds like from what you are telling me, a shift could happen really quite instantly. But it needs those three integral pieces in order to be making a step forward. Is that right? 

That's what I've seen. And what I have also seen is people who, you know, do one thing and they feel that they've had a shift, but oftentimes that shift is either just intellectual or it's only temporary because when they go back home, when they go back to their regular life, when they go back to their usual relationships and the same kind of conflict start happening, they're noticing they're back in their same patterns because these other areas, these other layers are still going to be the block. And so it really does require us to be removing the blocks on all the layers for us to experience shifts that will stick. 

The reason I'm grinning again is because you mentioned people taking a kind of single faceted approach and finding that like there's an initial shift and then suddenly feeling a bit lost. And I had such an experience of this, which is that a, it's such a cliche, I cut gluten out of my diet and obviously I had about a six month honeymoon effect where I was like, this is the best thing in the world and this is gonna change the world. Everyone needs to cut out gluten. And then suddenly it wore off. I started to feel my old self again and kept thinking like, what is it that's gonna be sustainable? What is it that's actually gonna make the big shift and keep it going? If I'd not thought, okay, I've gotta look elsewhere, I've gotta find something else. I'd have been stuck thinking that it was gluten that was causing my disease. I'd never have even got anywhere near trauma. I feel grateful to have found practitioners like yourself who have that multifaceted approach. It's so valuable and it's not common at all. Even in 2025. 

Even in 2025, even with all of the information and the research that we have, this is not what you're gonna hear from your practitioner. This is not what you're gonna hear from your therapist. Like they're not bringing all the pieces in yet that are essential. And leaves a person to have to kind of figure out their own path, and that's why I wrote my book. I really wanted to be able to give people that clear path forward. Not that it's an easy path because we've already talked about just how hard it can seem to connect my mind and my body, but it doesn't need to be confus. It can be a clear path, and then we just work through how do I walk myself through this? How do I pace this? How do I create that safe enough to be able to walk down this path towards my best health and my best self. 

You mentioned earlier insecure attachment, and I thought it might be helpful for listeners to, to learn about how I found your work. I noticed a pattern in a lot of my intimate relationships where I needed to have that person act in a certain way for me to feel safe and feel seen and secure. I saw your course and I thought, attachment that is what I need. And I joined and it was that, but it was so much more. I had no idea I'd be spending hours per week with a 5-year-old version of myself, the same memory that comes back to me, same need that wasn't met and the same cry for attention, which was manifesting in my adult relationships. The reason I mention this now is because one of the biggest struggles for MEN1 patients is that in healthcare settings, they can feel or we can feel so unheard and so unseen by the people we are thinking we are meant to trust whether or not that is necessarily their intention. Why is it that going in and spending time with my 5-year-old self is gonna be helping me in my adult relationships and in all of my relationships 20 years later? 

Isn't that crazy that our five-year-old self can still be such a block? And that's exactly what happens. I remember so many times feeling like this internal resistance to doing something or when I was in the middle of a situation and realizing that there was this illogical but very real fear, panic that was coming up that was so much more powerful than my adult logical, rational self. And as a person who prided herself in being rational, logical, and not into that emotional stuff, this was talking about a paradox. This is quite interesting. And to discover that. There are these younger parts of ourselves, and I love Dr. Janina Fisher's language around this, is that these parts become fragmented, meaning in that moment, that younger self, when I was that age, I experienced something that was, that was overwhelming. I didn't understand it. I couldn't process it. it started that disconnection from my body, 'cause it created these sensations of I'm powerless, I'm trapped, I'm all alone, and I just have to go along with something that I don't like and I can't make it stop. And not knowing at that time, or not having people in my life at that time to help me resolve that internal experience, it just got stored. But when it gets stored, it's like that self gets fragmented and stuck there. I remember working with another gal and as we were working with her younger part in that biology of attachment course, she realized something powerful that her little girl was still waiting for her mommy to just acknowledge her and. Her little girl was still waiting and she was in her thirties, and it developed chronic fatigue, no surprise. So this idea that these younger parts need repair. That is part of the repair and that those younger selves also are contributing to the inner tension, the inner stress, the inner overwhelm that creates more problems in our biology. So if we really wanna shift our physical health then we will need to also go back and look to see what parts of myself did get fragmented that are still waiting for something and I need to be the one to go back and rescue them and give them what they need, that now they can come along with me and be now in the present moment in our adult life. 

I love that and I found it personally so empowering to think that the only person I really needed in my life was myself. Doesn't mean I don't want other people here. Of course I do. I love people. I'm a real extrovert, but it is very exhausting. You talked about chronic fatigue syndrome. Honestly, I experience more exhaustion from emotional and mental upset and weariness over patterns and thoughts and emotional states that are happening inside my body, inside my head, than I do my disease. That's what the telltale sign for me was that actually my disease is not my diagnosis. It is that trauma that stuck and needs to process. As you said, we come at things such a logical, heady angle, but until we bring the body into it, it's just not gonna be sustainable. And that's something that you do so well, bringing all these separate components together is so remarkable and very much needed.

 I obviously talk about your courses and I've done one of them and I can highly recommend to anyone who's listening back, they are just such a gentle but powerful introduction into trauma, healing, into somatic work, into parts work in a way that also creates space for enjoying the science as well. I know Dr. Aimie, you recently published a book, which I think it might be sitting behind you. Please feel free to tell us what is that book about? If someone's listening back and they get your book, what are they gonna learn? What are they gonna take away from it? And what is your mission really with that piece of work? 

Yes, that is my book and I have been told that it is on Amazon in the UK. 

I checked earlier today, it's there. 

 Amazing. I love how that works. It is on how the body experiences and holds fear, pain, and overwhelm from our past and how to heal it. So it's broken into three sections. The first section is on how does the body experience a trauma? What is that actual process. What is that actual definition? Then, how would I know if something had been stressful or if that was a trauma for my body? How does the body experience trauma? That's the first section. Then in the second section, I say, all right, so if we experience a trauma, why does the body hold onto it? Why doesn't it just let it go? Why can't we just move on like we all wanna do? Why does it actually hold on to those emotional pains, wounds, the fear and the overwhelm of it. How does that actually happen? And then in the third section, it's, and here's what to do about it. Now that you know that it is holding on, and here is how it has been holding on in the different ways, the different impact that it's had here is your clear path forward.

Here are these three layers that we need to integrate and in this order and order to align with the body's natural healing strategies so that we can experience these shifts that we've been talking about and truly be in our best health and be our best selves, no matter what condition or genetic vulnerabilities we may have.  📍 

I am really grateful for Dr. Aimie, everything that you have shared today, your time, generosity of wisdom. I love that we've gone really deep on something, which I can guarantee now, very few MEN1 patients will have had the opportunity to listen to and might not get to elsewhere. So your presence in that sense is massively appreciated. I wish you all the best with your book. All the work you do around the world, and I am so looking forward to keeping up with your journey and hopefully at some point in the future having you back on our podcast and we can take another little niche topic and dive in on there if that's something that you'd be up for doing. 

 Well, I just appreciate, Lizzie, that you are showing up in the world to share hope, to share, hope, to share healing, and not everyone does that. Not everyone is brave enough to do that. So thank you for showing up in the world in the way that you are.

What I love about Dr. Aimie's work is her multifaceted approach to health and healing, deeply rooted in evidence-based science and yet so much more effective than more traditional mental health approaches I've tried for myself. Her brand new book is now available to buy on Amazon and do check out the incredible courses on her website, one of which I've done myself and could call absolutely life-changing. If you want to find out how I've personally stopped my MEN1 symptoms without meds or surgery, join my community to receive the guided steps I follow. All links in the description box below wherever you are listening to this podcast.